CBC’s ‘Deadly Force’ Investigation: Civilian Deaths Involving Police

CBC’s ‘Deadly Force’ Investigation: Civilian Deaths Involving Police

Published on Monday April 9, 2018, the Toronto Star’s Editorial Board’s article, ‘Deaths by police can and must be reduced’, mentions a new study by CBC News entitled, “Deadly Force”. This new report, which chronicles police-involved deaths across Canada from 2000 to the present, was, as the Toronto Star stated “shocking as it was unsurprising”. As the Toronto Star noted, “In deadly encounters with Toronto police, more than a third of victims are black,” ran one CBC headline. The Star noted that another headline for a follow-up story on this report from the national broadcaster read: “Most people who died in police encounters in Manitoba were Indigenous.”

Falconers LLP has represented families in the past where deaths involving the police occurred. Currently, Falconers LLP represents Sammy Yatim’s mother, Sahar Bahadi, in her civil lawsuit against the Toronto Police and Constable Forcillo. On January 25, 2016 Constable Forcillo was found guilty, by a jury, of attempted murder in the shooting of Yatim, after shooting the 18-year-old Yatim 9 times and killing him, in July of 2013 on a Toronto streetcar.

As the Toronto Star editorial remarked, Canada does not collect official statistics on police-involved deaths of civilians and as such, the CBC News “has done the country a service in producing a database it says is the first of its kind.”